New bike fever! My new race machine is
finally here, after a hiccup or two which were sorted out by the lovely guys at
Cheeky Velosport, I picked it up on a Thursday evening just in time for the
weather to dump 50mm of rain on the local trails :-( in time for the weekend. So instead of a spin on the trails it was
a bike set up in the garage of Scott Steward and then the bike went back to the
shop for some tweaks to cable length and bar width before I finally rode it on
the dirt in Glenrock last Tuesday evening and Wednesday.
It’s generated a bit of interest the
Lapierre XR team, it’s not a common brand in Australia and quite a few of the
Newy mtb community had been into the shop to check it out before I even saw it!
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| The Lapierre XR Team finally hits the dirt |
First impressions, well what I can I say
I’m new to the 29er thing and it felt a bit odd. I was a bit tentative as the
handling was a bit different and I was starting to wonder whether it was a good
idea to race the new bike just days later at a National Round. Hmmm yes a
Subaru UCI official national level round of XCO racing…
So the idea of racing a national XCO
(Olympic format cross country) has been in the back of my mind since winning
the state champs last year, but with the first round a 10-hour drive away at Mt
Buller and my new bike not ready yet I ended up not entering. It was probably
the right decision but I loved Mt Buller and it was hard seeing the race
reports, footage and photos from those fantastic trails.
While the next round was at Thredbo, which
neither suits or excites me in terms of riding, I was going to have my new bike
and it was my last chance for the year as the 3rd round clashes with
Capital Punishment. So I pulled the trigger and entered, booked some
accommodation and hoped that I’d be ok on a new bike and recovered from the
cold that I somehow had managed to pick up!
The National Series rounds consist of three
events for the All Mountain Cup (XC riding), including a short course
eliminator on the Friday, the standard XCO on Saturday and a longer
point-to-point race on Sunday. With the drive from Newcastle being over 7 hours
I decided I’d be skipping the eliminator on the Friday, then I heard the
point-to-point, which at Mt Buller had involved the fantabulous Stone Fly
trail, was going to be laps of the flat and non-techy Crackenback course.
Uninspiring!
Luckily Martin and Juliane from Rocky Trail
Entertainment had an event on Sunday in Canberra, the RockyTrail100 which
involved 1,2,3 or 5 laps of a roughly 33km course of Stromlo… perfect as this
would put us 2.5 hours closer to home for the drive back on Sunday.
So Thursday night saw up packing and
loading two new 29ers (Tim has a new Scott) onto the roof, then having to
rearrange the racks as the bars are wider than our old bikes, and all the time
being attacked by the million of mosquitoes that have loved the recent rain at
our place. Finally on the road we headed to Sydney for a night with friends so
we’d avoid the F3 peak traffic Friday morning.
Of course staying with riding friends meant
that our arrival meant the bikes came off the roof and into the garage for
admiration and were reloaded the next morning for the drive to Thredbo. Tim had
caught the cold lurgy and slept most the journey, which meant that when we
arrived at Thredbo I set out alone to scope out the course.
Most of the course was familiar from our
New Years riding but with the addition of some walking track (with stair cases
converted to ramps) and some extra switchbacks up grassy ski slopes that were
new to me. Luckily the technical section was a part of the trail that Tim and I
had spent some time on at New Years, but I still felt like the front wheel of
this new bike had a mind of its own and bounced off line easily.
Overall the course felt tough, like some M
C Escher sketch it definitely has more up than down! Part of the walking track
had a narrow footbridge, which ended in a sharp hairpin right-hander onto a
ramp (over stairs) and I simply couldn’t ride it. According to another bloke
out there that afternoon you just had to endo and whip the rear around… right!
Feeling extremely apprehensive I headed
back to the hotel just as some humid summer rain started to fall. I was
starting to think the whole idea of entering a National Round was a little
silly, seeing as how I don’t even train for this length of race – let alone
doing it on a new bike after a week off the bike with illness.
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| Carpark Warm-Up |
Too late to pull out anyway so the next
morning saw me set up on the roadie on the trainer in a Thredbo car park trying
to warm up. This is a novel idea for me, I generally feel that if I’m going to
race then I don’t need to do EXTRA riding before hand … it’s like practice laps
– a waste of energy. While that might be
true for 7 hour solo races, apparently XCO is a different world as every big
name in XC riding was doing laps of the sealed road sporting the latest
skinsuits… intimidated? Maybe a little!
Instead of the usual start line rabble it
was all the official UCI orderly call up of the 11 elite females, two minutes
to go and the silence was deafening the start line tension was suffocating.
Luckily it didn’t affect little Hamish who is almost two, breaking the tense
silence by yelling “go Mummy go, go now mummy go” at elite rider mum Tory lined
up on the front line of the grid.
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| The start line-up including Olympian Bec Henderson |
The next minute we were off, XCO starts are
not my forte – unsurprising really, seeing as I’ve never tried to be good at
them. Still last into the single track didn’t last long as I passed on of the
girls just a few minutes in. I spent the next little while on the rear wheel of
a girl in a VIS roadie kit – I was obviously descending faster than her and
pulled a pass as soon as we were in more open track. However we soon were back
past the start finish and onto the endless switchback climb up the grassy
paddock and her roadie fitness soon saw that order swap back.
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| Never ending climb on grass |
The climb doesn’t feel like it should be
hard, it never seems steep and it’s not technical at all but it just HURT. Then
you come out onto firetrail and keep going up before a last section of even
more grassiness before you hit the most technical descent with max heart rate
pounding and jelly legs from lactic acid. This is a section of walking track
with steps rocks and roots, which I really enjoyed on the Anthem at New Years
but struggled to feel confident on in race practice.
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| More grass, this time going down |
Luckily some alterations to fork pressure
meant my bike handled superbly and I smashed down that section faster than I’d
ridden it before. Then some sketchy loose firetrail and into the walking track,
I simply ran the bridge into ramp corner
(later found out a lot of the other girls did too) before heading up the
rocky climb and last bit of firetrail before more grassy corners back down to
the finish… 4 laps to go.
The whole race my legs felt dead, apart
from the first lap I struggled to get my heart rate up to normal XC racing
levels because my legs just wouldn’t come to the party. The track was dusty,
loose and hot with not many spots to drink and nowhere to recover; I was off
the pace of the same U19 rider I’d beaten convincingly at the State Champs.
Each time I came through the feed/tech zone Tim was encouraging me to drink and
keep going – every time I just wanted to stop.
My goals for this race were simple: not to
get lapped (which means you get pulled off the course) and not to finish too far
back. I started to worry I would get lapped as I could see the front runners in
a few places and they were definitely flying, I could also still see the girl
in VIS kit each time up the climb and knew I wasn’t loosing much time on her. I
hadn’t seen the other girl I’d passed for some time and wondered if she was
still in the race.
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| The whole race simply hurt! |
Somehow I made it through another 3 laps
and got the bell for my last lap without being caught. Finally I was going up
that climb for the last time and into the final time down the techy descent.
The last time of running the ramp I asked the marshal if I had been on the only
one and he reassured my that a lot of the girls has been running that corner
all race. Finally I was coming down the final descent and across the finish line
with just under 2 hours of riding.
I found out later that there had been two
DNFs (including the girl I passed early on) so I’d come 9th in the
field. I probably hoped for a little better than that but realistically with
how I felt on the day I was happy to cross the line and not get lapped. I
always knew Thredbo wasn’t a course that suited me.
After watching the elite men start my now
dusty new bike went back on the roof and it was off to Canberra for 100km of
Stromlo!
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